Airtel Signs Rs 3,500 Crore Deal With Aircel

New Delhi: Bharti Airtel on Friday announced that it has signed a deal with Aircel to acquire 20 MHz of the company’s 4G spectrum in eight circles — Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir, West Bengal, Assam, North East, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa for Rs 3,500 crore.

The acquisition of Aircel's spectrum, which is valid up to September 2030, will make Bharti Airtel a pan India 4G operator. The deal will also help Aircel pay off debt and fulfill a condition for its merger with Reliance Communications. Aircel needed to reduce some Rs 4,000 crore of its Rs 18,000-crore debt. 

Last month on March 17, Bharti Airtel entered into a Rs 4,428 crore deal to buy Videocon Telecommunications' spectrum in six circles. The announcement was made hours after Idea Cellular called off its Rs 3,310 crore spectrum deal with Videocon.

Spectrum deals in the telecom sector have been on the rise after the government last year approved spectrum trading and sharing guidelines. Spectrum trading allows telecom companies to transfer their spectrum rights to another party.

Airtel was the first to start 4G services, on the 2300 MHz band in 2012. It stepped up the rollout in the past few months, expanding to more than 350 cities and towns, anticipating competition from Jio, which is expected to soft launch its 4G services shortly and start wider commercial operations by December. 

With 325 million subscribers, Bharti Airtel is India’s largest mobile network operator in India and the third largest in the world.